Dia Art Foundation presents Haegue Yang: Through, a major commission at Dia Beacon. The exhibition is staged across the museum's two levels, marking the first time an artist has conceived of a new body of work spanning the building’s stacked architectural volumes.

The exhibition harnesses the architecture’s distinct dualities as relational, oscillating dynamics—natural and artificial light, the elevated and the subterranean—and draws on the ancient Five Phases theory (五行思想). Throughout the exhibition, Haegue Yang maps her works according to cardinal axes and their chromatic associations in East Asian philosophy, supplemented by the true north orientation of the industrial building, providing a conduit between Dia’s spaces.

Central to the presentation is the radical composer and activist Isang Yun, who serves as a surrogate for Yang’s transnational and interdisciplinary imaginings. Intertwined into all four works, Yun’s quartet Images (1968) is sculpturally rescored by Yang, echoing the composer’s approach to giving new form to ancient entities through contemporary media as well as synthesizing avant-garde Western techniques and East Asian traditions.

This bilateral presentation involves four discrete yet integrated works. Tidal Field (2026), on the ground floor, is an installation of dark, draped venetian blinds, representing an innovation in Yang’s signature installations with the introduction of curvilinear forms. Also on the first floor, the soft, tentacular forms of Fallen Field (2026) evoke the imoogi—a mythical creature between a serpent and a dragon, eternally caught in mid-transformation—which represents a state of becoming between ascent and descent, nature and mythology. This presentation is the largest of Yang’s imoogi installations to date. Sonic Field (2026) is an expansive layer of bells atop a string of light bulbs, creating a landscape of luminous opacity.

The horizontal topology of works on the ground floor is counterpointed by the dynamic vertical louver installation, Axial Flow (2026), in the lower level. Here, a choreographed interplay of moving lights, keyed to the directional colors of the Five Phases theory, and shuttering metal slats are scaled and aligned to the uniquely columned space. Yang’s commission complements and challenges both Minimalism’s unit-based geometries and Postminimalism’s fluid forms as the works’ structural logic is undone by the fluidity of movement and lived experience.

Marking the opening of Through, Dia will present a chamber concert of Yun’s Images in the lower-level gallery, performed by ensemble-in-residence Sejong Soloists on October 10, 2026. The concert will be preceded by a contextual lecture by musicologist Mina Lee, who will address the composition and Yun’s musical legacy within the historical and biographical circumstances of his life, while drawing parallels between Yun’s and Yang’s practices.

Haegue Yang: Through is curated by Jordan Carter, curator, and Min Sun Jeon, assistant curator.

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